Tiny flower stems dropping off

Tiny flower stems dropping off

Tue Jun 30, 2009 5:22 pm

Hi girls and guys

My tomato plants seem fairly healthy although I have noticed that when, even so delicately, I touch some of the yellow flowers, the flowers and the tiny stems that are attached to them have dropped off.

Not all are doing this. I know that the yellow flowers will drop but never know the green stems that are attached can drop as well.

Mine have been doing this too. Has it been hot where you are? The best I can tell is that the blossoms will drop from sun scorch. I know mine have been well watered and I'm having a nice fruit production already, but not only am I losing a few blossoms, but a few tomatoes are dropping off really early. The one thing I have done that seems to help (mine are in a container, so I have the luxury) is moving them into the shade or semi shade during the last 3 or 4 hottest hours of the day. Are yours turning brownish and dry before they fall off? If so, I'd say sun scorch is the culprit. One way I knew for sure was because the blossoms I was losing were the newer ones on top of the plant. The ones in the middle with plenty of shade from the leaves above are doing great. If you prune, make sure to leave plenty of shade for blossoming branches. If you can't move it, maybe you could rig something temporary to keep the worst of the sun off? It has been 95-98 here every day for three weeks straight. The biggest problem is it's not even cooling off that much at night, never dropping below 80. My parents live about 2 hours SE of us and they got a drenching rainstorm last night. We haven't had a drop in weeks. It seems like I water my plants in the evening and they are bone dry by this time every day. I sure hope we aren't looking at a repeat of the drought we had last year. Especially since it was flash flood central here through the spring.

Forgot to mention, have you tried a tomato blossom spray? There are some that you can spray directly on the blossoms to make them stronger and yeild more fruit. I have been using one of those too for the last few days. I don't know if its' that or the shading, but something seems to be helping.

You may have hit the nail on the head (an English) expression. In other words, I think you have answered my question.

Over in England, temperatures never really get too hot. However, the last 10 days, we have had temps in their 90s. If we are lucky, during summer, it gets to the 75 to 80s on only a few days.

I water the plants every day, they are in containers.

The make of them or what type of tomato? my brother gave them to me and I believe they are called 'money-makers' ever heard of these? I do know though that this type of tomato produces lots of fruits. However, this is my first time of growing them.

I hope that yours improve, especially with the spray. Don' think I have heard of the spray here but if it works - go for it

Pebbles wrote:You may have hit the nail on the head (an English) expression. In other words, I think you have answered my question.

LOL.... We use that one too. It's not one that gets strange looks. Not like "Put it in the boot" or "Bob's Your Uncle." I have often found myself googling English to American slang translators, as I am a huge Doctor Who fan, and at least once an episode I'm going "What??"

blossom drop

Wed Jul 01, 2009 11:39 am

If you type blossom drop into the search box in upper left of most pages, you will find a lot that's been written here about it. It's basically a stress reaction of the plant. It can be to a variety of different stresses, but if you are having temps in the 90's that's probably it. Tomatoes are warm weather plants that don't like it really hot. They grow best in temps 70 - 80 (F, sorry you'll have to convert to C) and get heat stressed after about 85. So in hot weather, water more, and think about providing them some shade. You can cover them with floating row cover and then mist the cover.

Here we thought everyone in England went around saying "put it in the boot" all the time. In some old movies the boot was what Brits called the trunk of the car... So like just load your suitcases or whatever in the trunk..

I thought that 'put it in the boot' may have had some other meaning to it, you know, like, hit the nail on the head means that's the answer. Probably just my mind doing overtime, looking too deep into something.

Too much sun that's what I have had, the brain is fried, must go find a full bottle of wine to water it - hic

I have a grape tomato plant and its 80f at 11:42AM, not even the hottest part of the day. I was surprised they survived this long and have 4 tomatoes growing already.I want to try out that seaweed powder concentrate stuff because my sunflowers are looking dry.

Pebbles wrote:My hubby too is a huge Doctor Who fan. I will be upset when David Tennent leaves - I think he is the best. Never heard of 'put it in the boot' though - maybe you can explain that one to me

Rainbow got to the "boot" question. They really do go around saying that all the time in Australia. Not sure how truly common it is in the UK! I found "Bob's your uncle" so entertaining that my hubby and I have actually taken to saying that one. Sorry, I have been out of town for the Independence Day Holiday/my son's birthday and have been slow to reply.

I adore David Tennant... to the degree that my husband, also a big Doctor Who fan (who also likes David Tennant) has forbidden me to speak of it. LOL! It's funny because I've never in my life been attracted to a man that skinny and manic. I have, however, always had a thing for a man with a Scots accent. It doesn't matter if he's as old as Sean Connery. I joke that it's something in my DNA, a throwback to my heritage or something.

I had a whole other paragraph typed out about Doctor Who, but since it's so far off topic, I'll PM it to you.

How are your tomatoes doing? Have you been shading them? It's seemed to do the trick for mine.

My tomatoes are doing much better. I think this is because the temps have dropped quite a lot. They are in the region of 68 to 75 at the moment, whereas, couple of weeks ago or last week it hit 102 - 104.

Glad yours are doing much better too.

Forgot to tell you on the pm that hubby has every doctor who episode ever made - and I'm not just talking C Eccleston and D Tennant either